Come Home Soon A Two Battle War
by AshleyKay
Summary: Link goes to Vietnam, Tracy lingers at home. The world keeps going and everything keeps changing.


**Note: One this is for Erin my Emo!Twin and Nonna who is a brave soul and thetworivers who first mentioned Vietnam in a Hairspray fic.**

**Secondly this is for my step-dad who is a Vietnam Vet. I won't post a big long back story like I have on my livejournal, but suffice to say, my step-dad is made of awesome and encouraged me and helped me understand what I was writing about. **

**Lastly, this was once a fanmix, this in between each part is the name of an artist and the song the say that made each part. If you want the songs they're availiable on my LJ and I think it helps set the mood if you listen to them each with the correct part. Anyway Link in Vietnam fic.**

**Come Home Soon**

A Two Battle War

**I. It's All A Home Spun Revolution**

The world was all greys and blues and concrete floors, it was made of a clean city smell and stretching buildings like Babylon. It's what he's use too, it's home and comfort, it's Ultra Clutch and Tracy's upturned smile . It's tightly packed suburbs and slow moving yellow school buses it everything in the world he's every known. That world is a glare of lights in the sky and the feel of his arms around his girl. He likes that world, he likes the smell of laundry hung out to dry and sweet tangy apple pie straight from a tidy kitchen. Now the world is flat and open, Now is a world where the only thing that stretches is land and sky. He hasn't smelt sweet pie and laundry in weeksmonthsyears or has it been just a few days, he can't tell, somewhere between the running and the fear and the spit from screams leaves his mind unable to tell the difference between then and now. He knows that once there was a curl on his head and song in his step, now he only marches and his hair has been cut, and he feels like Sampson with all his power gone.

He writes to Tracy but in all comes out sound like pretty lies because even though this is only home (farfar) away from home (Kansas built skylines and crashing thunder but it isn't Baltimore and city streets so it might as well be underwater/underground) he can't stop his heart from going sosososo fast that he can taste the blood in his mouth. Because Link isn't silly or stupid, and he's long gone from naive, he knows that war is a big word far from little boy games. He knows because boys come home in body bags and sometimes they don't come home at all, no named and missing parts. He's seen them on leaves wandering streets like living ghosts, so he sleeps with his eyes open and his heart beating but with an anticipation of the things that can't be seen even on the open endless horizon.

Jimi Hendrix- Star Spangled Banner

**II. It's A Blue Green Sky But It's Hard To See With This Thing In My Eye**

It's strange that his first time on a plane would be for something like this (a crammed no windowed place with half terrified boys pretending so hard to be old men with guns in hand and bravery that's more shadow than real.) He tries to imagine the world zooming by outside his window, he knows there going so fast, faster than anything he can really comprhend, but all he can see behind his closed eyes are lights and hairspray and a girl who is far away and a long ways down. He sees Baltimore streets and Corny's smile, he can smell the change of the world from this high, and he isn't so sure that it's good. He tries to stop the sound of those baby boy voices crying out about getting themselves a Commie and how there daddy's are so proud. Link isn't sure if his dad is proud, or not and he's pretty sure he doesn't really care if he is or not, because Link's always been more a sweet song making lover than a trash talking fighter. He isn't sure he really wants to kill anyone, he knows that Communism is bad but he isn't sure that he's ready to kill or die for it. Not when his Momma's pot roast is at home and Tracy's warm hands are just waiting to slip into his. Not when all those things they seem to fighting and dying for are so far away from home . But he's also a good boy, and Tracy made him into the right kind of guy, the one who does the right thing even if it's something he isn't quite sure of. So his letter came and his goodbyes were teary and his dad's and Mr. Turnblad's hand prints still linger from the back slaps. There still an invisible stain from his momma's kiss and Mrs. Turnblad's hug. There is still the smell of Tracy lingering on him, even all this time from then, from her hug and her tears and the pale whispers of love and miss and _pleasepleasepleaseccomehome_.

To Susan On the West Coast- Donovan

**III. The World Contracts and Everything Suddenly Too Small and Too Big**

In that realm of almost sleep and half mad dreams he sees in black and white and heavy blues and greens, he sees without meaning to Tracy and an already half made life, but it's always the end of the madness that gets to him, because there at that place it is simply darkness. Even when he opens his eyes he feels like he's still there, half caught and half damned, it's hot here and when it rains it rains for weeks. The smell of rain becomes sickening and torture, where once it brought to mind growth and freshness. Now it means blindness and looking back and forward and never knowing where the next shot is coming from. Even when there's quiet, it's a unease that forms pits in his stomach and turns him first into bitting at his lip till it bleeds, then on to his finger nails till the become nubs that are bruised and battered, and eventually it's what makes him take up smoking, just for something to bring in a little bit of light or hope a little bit home on the front. He lets the cigarette lay limply on his lips and stares at letters with Tracy's curvy writing and silly drawings and feels for the first time in a long time that maybe it'll all be okay. Because in 8 months, 15 days, 18 hours and 15 min, he'll be home.

It's almost enough to make the dreams stop.

Feel Like I'm Fixing To Die- Country Joe and The Fish

**IV. The Great American Dream Of Doing Nothing Still Holds True**

Time drags.

Not because of slowness or homesickness, but that he can't tell which day it is, what hour is what. Everything is blurred by the smell of rotting jungle and boy soliders, it's how he forgets about home and hearth and the white pristine shade of his momma's apron. It's how in the end the only family he can really see are brothers, every shade and hue, the ones who run back to save his sorry ass, the ones he would run back for, the ones he'll carry if it comes to that (it has and it will he's sure come again). He loses track of time because his feet swell and look as if they'll rot away,because he hasn't seen anything but brother and dying jungle, he isn't even sure anymore if anything but this land and this place exist. Time doesn't exist in places like these, Link is damn sure of that. There's no time for time, when his brother is face up in front of him and another one is hung across his shoulders begging to go home, and it's all happening at the same time and in the distance he can here Brother Tom hum a tune about sitting down and watching the world go by.

(Sittin' On) The Dock of The Bay- Otis Redding

**V. Tired and Nearly Dying But It'll All Be Over Soon, **_**Right**_

The world tastes like death.

Like rotten fruit and dead boys, he's so damn _tired_. He's tired of fighting a war he doesn't understand, and of seeing nothing but enemies laying in the bushes. He wants to go home, wants to see his girl (his picture is half torn and mostly gone, but he can still see her face, the way she looked with her hair down in black and white, the way for a moment the world may have stopped all together), instead he eats bad food and smokes too much, his hair has grown back but it isn't the same, the curl is gone and instead there is a messy flop of sweat and heat and itching bites. Gone is that smirk and smile and suaveness of a youth cut short, instead he thinks he may have finally reached manhood but it feels less like strength and sophisticatation than he thought it would. It's more like half gone madness and a longing for days he can barely recall beyond not here and never again. Everything now is green rot and dirty boys, it's fresh faced youths coming take their place and the bright shining distance of something that use to be hope. He feels too old and too young and that he has lived too much for things like this. So while everything around him ticks by and bombs keep coming and shells keep exploding he thinks of how to make it keep promises and when he get a chance to sleep.

Soon he thinks, soon all this we'll be over and everything we'll be like it should.

And it is and it was. Even if it wasn't the way he thought.

We've Got To Get Out of This Place- Animals

**VI. When It's Over, There's Nothing But Change and Sacrifice To Look Forward To**

She's always tried so damn hard to do the right thing. Ever since his been gone she's been torn in two. She knows (like she knew the future was about equal and truth and nowhere to go but up and better) that this war is wrong, that boys like Link and Seaweed and Fender and sososososo many more shouldn't fight without having some clue as to why, she knows that women are as strong as mean and that black and white are beautiful together. She knows that if Link and Seaweed and Fender and all those more weren't off fighting and dying ( poordeadandgone IQ who was more a brain than a dancer, more boy than a man)she would have run off and protested with Amber and Little Lisa who's daddy was dead and brother could never be found.

Everything changes in time, everything shifts, everything's different. Link's daddy calls her, and she knows it isn't good. She takes the letter from Mrs. Larkin's hand and sits on the couch beside her, and doesn't move. She stays there long after curfew and long after dark and longlonglong after Mrs.Larkin falls asleep with her head in Tracy's lap and tears of black staining her face. When her dad finally comes for her she doesn't scream or cry or make a sound she simply lays in bed, her clothes still on her shoes scuffing the white sheets and her eyes wide open. She lays there and dreams with white shrouds and mourning calls, she lays there and tries to pin point when she is upside down because the world keeps spinning and she keeps breathing but she's pretty sure she isn't alive at all.

She wears black to the funeral and black to the viewing and she wears a ring of black around the part of her that she had given to him so willingly. She stands by his momma and holds her hand, she steadies herself as Mrs.Larkin sobs and falls and breaks apart. She doesn't fall even when everyone leaves but her and his red-faced mother and his tired old father who's staring ahead and looking into the sun and weeps silently into the wind.

She goes back to school in the fall and doesn't make a sound, she doesn't sing and she doesn't dance, she moves her feet and thinks about doing the right thing and how maybe if everyone had said what they thought Link might have his hand in her's and the world might have been open to them both. She goes to her first protest that night. She doesn't every go back to school. Whatever there is to learn she pretty sure she won't find it in books written by men who sit in offices and no nothing about living.

She breaks in spring, she falls apart at the seems and she is very sure she will never again be whole. She sobs until she vomits and vomits till she can't see anything but blackness and spots.

The world is different and new and everything that was ever possible seems faded and far way. She decides to keep moving and keep breathing, she decides Link, dead or alive is worth fighting for.

She changes the world.


End file.
